He took them, and glancing at one of them threw it out on the ground. "This is from Ricker," he said, opening the other. "If you'll excuse me," and he began to read it. "Well, that is all right," he said, when he had run it through. "He can manage without me a little while longer; but a few more days like this will put an end to my loafing. I begin to feel like work, for the first time since I came up here."
"The good air is beginning to tell," said Louise, sitting down on the board which formed a bench between two of the trees fronting the hammock. "But if you hurry back to town, now, you will spoil everything. You must stay the whole summer."
"You rich people are amusing," said Maxwell, turning himself on his side, and facing her. "You think poor people can do what they like."
"I think they can do what other people like," said the girl, "if they will try. What is to prevent your staying here till you get perfectly well?"
"The uncertainty whether I shall ever get perfectly well, for one thing," said Maxwell, watching with curious interest the play of the light and shade flecks on her face and figure.
"I know you will get well, if you stay," she interrupted.
"And for another thing," he went on, "the high and holy duty we poor people feel not to stop working for a living as long as we live. It's a caste pride. Poverty obliges, as well as nobility."
"Oh, pshaw! Pride obliges, too. It's your wicked pride. You're worse than rich people, as you call us: a great deal prouder. Rich people will let you help them."
"So would poor people, if they didn't need help. You can take a gift if you don't need it. You can accept an invitation to dinner, if you're surfeited to loathing, but you can't let any one give you a meal if you're hungry. You rich people are like children, compared with us poor folks. You don't know life; you don't know the world. I should like to do a girl brought up like you in the ignorance and helplessness of riches."
"You would make me hateful."